Your sign is, in fact, your entire Astral Map |

Saying you are an Aryan, Libra or any other sign is the same as saying “I have black hair”. I mean, it doesn’t mean much. Maybe you don’t even imagine it, but your sign is actually your entire Astral Map.

When someone asks “what’s your sign?” – a common question in our culture – is actually raising a point that only became significant from the beginning of the 20th century, due to the movements to popularize Astrology, largely carried out by the English astrologer Alan Leo.

Although Astrology is a knowledge with more than five thousand years of history, the issue of sun signs and their use as an identity is relatively recent. Saying something like “I’m an Aries”, “My boyfriend is a Taurus” or anything like that, if said to a human being from before the beginning of the 20th century, would sound like an alien code. The person simply would not understand what is being talked about. Even today, for any astrologer, this type of identity description does not mean much, it does not have great importance within the context of an individualized astrological study, based on the study of the Astral Map.

When Alan Leo popularized astrological knowledge based on the sun signs, he did so for a very simple reason: to know a person’s sun sign, it is enough to know the day and month in which he was born. All people born on September 15th, for example, will be Virgos. The rising sign requires a more complex calculation, and the moon sign then goes without saying… But the fact that the sun sign is better known than the moon sign or the rising sign, for example, has nothing to do with a supposed “greater importance” of the solar sign, but with greater ease of information. As his goal was to popularize Astrology, Alan Leo sought to publicize the astrological point that would be easier for anyone to know, without having to perform any complicated mathematical calculations.

It makes no sense to reduce someone to your sign

Want to see how the thing is more complex? If we multiply the twelve signs by twelve possible ascendants, we will have 144 types. If we go further and multiply the 144 types by 12 possible lunar positions, we have 1728 types. Think it’s over? So follow me: multiply 1728 types by 3 possible positions of the planet Mercury, 5 possible positions of the planet Venus, 12 positions of Mars, 12 of Jupiter, 12 of Saturn, and… we arrive at the astonishing number of 44,789,760 different types of people!

It makes no sense to establish the sun sign as the only criterion (much less as the main criterion), otherwise we would say that there are only twelve types of human beings on Earth.

And this is just the beginning, as I have not considered here the fact that each planetary placement can manifest itself in thirty different degrees, generating certain aspects. I did not take into account significant points, such as the lunar nodes, the Part of Fortune, or even the planets that lie beyond Saturn and are used in the context of modern Astrology. I have not considered the placement of the planets in the astrological houses. The idea here is not to teach Astrology, but to show you, the reader, how much broader the subject is than it seems.

If you got dizzy with so many numbers, equally dizzy does any astrologer feel when faced with reductionisms in the identity of sun signs. Not that there was no merit in Alan Leo’s popularization. If, on the one hand, we can say that he made Astrology somewhat superficial, on the other hand, we have to admit that many of us only know about this subject (myself included) because there was someone like Alan Leo to take Astrology out of the dungeon of knowledge closed at seven keys.

However, there are a few things you need to be careful about: say you’ve had two, maybe three bad experiences in your life with people whose sun sign is Libra, for example. Hence, to detest Librans (people born with the Sun in Libra) is a short hop, and a short hop wrong. In Astrology, the compatibilities and difficulties between people are verified from a study called “synastry”, in which the solar sign does not play a, shall we say, decisive role.

Do you want to know what affinities exist between you? Make a free mini version of Sinastria Amorosa here and find out how to identify affinities and challenges to be worked on so that the relationship is strengthened.

That said, returning to the example, your problem with Libras may have been just a coincidence, and nothing guarantees that you might not have a great story with someone who has the Sun in Libra in the future. Furthermore, you also don’t know whether your problem with the previous three Libras was not due to another astrological factor that could only be identified through a synastric analysis. Likewise, it is a totally anti-astrological prejudice to make statements like “I didn’t hire so-and-so because he’s a Gemini”, or “I didn’t even try to be friends with a Sicran because he’s a Sagittarius”. Even on the positive side, this would be reckless: throwing yourself into a relationship just because the person is a sun sign that you “think is cool” is dangerous. Modern Sun sign culture, as you can see, leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to true astrological knowledge!

Your zodiac sign hasn’t changed – and won’t.

When we talk about signs, there is another point that is essential to clarify: signs are not constellations. If someone says they are Scorpio, this has absolutely nothing to do with the constellation that bears the name “Scorpio”. Some skeptics often point to the fact that the constellations move in the celestial sphere, and that the Zodiac of today is totally different from the Zodiac of two thousand years ago. Those skeptics are right, the constellations really have moved. The mistake they make (and not only them, as many people who even work with Astrology ignore this) is to confuse “astrological sign” with “constellations”.

Astrology signs are tropics, not constellations.

For you to understand better, imagine that a circular strip is projected from the Earth, a strip divided into twelve equal sectors. These are what in Astrology we call “zodiac signs”. The signs, for Astrology, are geometric.

What happens is that due to the fact that some of the celestial constellations bear the same name as the astrology signs, many people are mistaken in thinking that signs are constellations.

Therefore, even if such information breaks the romanticism of a starry night, you need to know that the constellation of Taurus is one thing, and the astrological sign of Taurus is quite another. Saying that someone is a Taurus, for example, has nothing to do with the supposed fact that, at the time of that person’s birth, the Sun was passing through the constellation of Taurus, because it wasn’t. What happens is that, in this birth, the Sun passed through the geometric zone that, for Astrology, corresponds to the sign of Taurus.

This way, you already know the answer when you read around that your sign has changed, or when you come across a skeptic who accuses Astrology of using the wrong signs. This information is not valid. Your sign has not changed, precisely because it was never a constellation. Criticisms of Astrology will always exist, but the worst are those made without knowing the facts. We, who appreciate the subject, need to be duly informed so as not to be carried away by incorrect information.